L.A.’s World-Class Necessity : What do New York, Paris and London have that we don’t? Support for public rapid transit that takes everyone everywhere.

The old folks are right: You never miss your water till the well runs dry. In this case, the well is public transportation, which I, erroneously, always assumed any self-respecting American city of decent size would have.

Then I moved to Los Angeles. I should say at the outset that I am a fan of this place. It’s a great town, with lots of things to recommend it. A decent public transit network, however, isn’t one of them. So I trek back East--usually to New York--at least once a year, for the three things I cannot get here, and am still homesick for: cold weather (OK, have me committed, but I like wearing a heavy coat four months of the year), urban areas that encourage walking and public transportation, especially subways.

With all of New York’s problems--and there are too many to list here--it does possess a public transit system that allows people from even the farthest reaches of the city to traverse it, end to end, for a little more than $1. Lawyers, publishers, secretaries and bankers take the Broadway and Lexington Avenue trains down to their offices. Nannies come from Brooklyn to their day jobs in Manhattan. College kids, backpacks bursting, commute across town to class. One day, I waded through a chest-high trainful of schoolchildren who were taking the Central Park line to the Museum of Natural History. Another day, I watched a quartet of German tourists, bristling with cameras and visitors’ guides, emerge at Broadway and 72nd Street to walk a few blocks south to the Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center.

Watching all this made me wonder what kind of city Los Angeles would be if we had the equivalent of the systems in New York, Boston or Washington. People from the Bay Area who come down to do business for the day could take the train from LAX to mid-Wilshire, downtown or Century City. Tourists could jump on the Metro from their downtown hotels and visit Universal City or Farmer’s Market. Inner-city kids who wanted to spend the afternoon at the beach could ride the train to Venice or Santa Monica and be home in time for dinner. The possibilities are--or should be--endless.

Obviously, there are barriers. Money is large on the list: The tiny chunk of the Los Angeles Metro that has been completed cost $1.45 billion. And so far, the Red Line doesn’t go much of anywhere. Future installments are predicted to cost many billions more.

But money isn’t the only problem. Even if we had a subway or above-ground rail system that went somewhere useful, we would have to re-educate ourselves into taking advantage of it. Our car-driven culture is hard to give up, even though many people swear they would love an alternative to getting stuck in traffic for up to an hour and a half each day. So for a new subway system to work, a change in philosophy will be almost as important as money.

So will a change in attitude. If part of the purpose of public transportation is to afford the public a chance to get from here to there in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of money, the system should stop at places like Beverly Hills and Brentwood--places where nannies and housekeepers now wait for the sporadic bus in the dark of early winter evenings for rides home that, with transfers, can take up to three hours. Beverly Hills and Brentwood residents might protest the construction of a Metro stop in their gilded neighborhoods, just as did Georgetown residents did when the Washington Metro was built nearly 20 years ago. They would rather give up the convenience of rapid transit than face the possibility that Those People might come to explore their little Edens. (Sometimes, Those People is code for Minorities and Other Undesirables; other times it merely means Those Who Do Not Live Here--which for Beverly Hills amounts to pretty much the same thing.)

Parisians who live in high-rent arrondissements and the well-to-do in Vienna, London and Milan do not share those worries; both cities have underground and tram stops in all the desirable urban neighborhoods because those people understand that an extensive, citywide transportation system is essential to the vitality of any modern, civilized metropolis.

Los Angeles has billed itself as in league with the big boys for a few decades now. Our restaurants, shops and cultural attractions compete with those in cities across the globe. But in order to truly be, in the words of our departing mayor, a world-class city, Los Angeles will have to ante up to provide the quick, energy-efficient public transportation it is capable of offering its citizens and its visitors. Rumor has it that Richard Riordan was elected because he promised to make the trains run on time. First, though, he will have to make sure there are trains, and that they run to places Angelenos really need to reach.